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		<header>
			<h1>Seeing reason</h1>
			<p>Day 00559: Friday, 2016 September 16</p>
		</header>
<p>
	Current countdowns:
</p>
<ul>
	<li>20 unfinished weblog entries in <a href="/en/weblog/2016/07-July/">July</a></li>
	<li>3 days until mobile voice/<abbr title="Short Message Service">SMS</abbr> service with my current carrier ends</li>
	<li>33 days until mobile data service with my current carrier ends</li>
	<li>30 days until my old domain registrar can no longer counter my charge dispute</li>
</ul>
<p>
	I don&apos;t have time for all the email that I receive.
	I&apos;m probably about a year behind in processing political (such as petitions that need signing) email alone.
	I can&apos;t deal with all of the political stuff <strong>*and*</strong> working on moving <strong>*and*</strong> working on my education <strong>*and*</strong> trying to catch up on my journal entries <strong>*and*</strong> trying to have a social life <strong>*and*</strong> dealing with my old domain registrar that won&apos;t let me leave <strong>*and*</strong> being the only vegan in a non-vegan household <strong>*and*</strong> not having a realiable Internet connection (both for my schooling and for my server).
	I realize that politics are important, but it&apos;s too much.
	I&apos;ve now dumped my entire political email backlog into my archive, and probably won&apos;t respond to political emails for quite some time.
	The upcoming election is a doozy, but the simple fact is that we&apos;ve already lost it.
	Neither Trump nor Clinton is fit for the job and either one will badly damage the country.
	When the democrats overruled their own party and threw Sanders out of the running, we lost all hope of having a decent presidential candidate.
	I apologize for not adding my voice to the collective that demands change on global issues, but I simply am under too much stress right now.
</p>
<p>
	I finished up the reading that I was scheduled to finish yesterday, completed yesterday&apos;s post, completed yesterday&apos;s quizzes, and moved on to today&apos;s work.
	This was my response to this week&apos;s <span title="Online Education Strategies">UNIV 1001</span> discussion board question:
</p>
<blockquote>
<p>
	Content is more important than grammar, but this is a university, and people here should conduct themselves in an educated manner.
	Horrid grammar is far too rampant in my country, and I would normally deduct points for failing to at least have reasonable grammar (though I wouldn&apos;t demand perfect grammar).
	It has always been my belief that people should have decent grammar in their native tongue.
	However, this course is open to citizens of non-English-speaking countries.
	If this course were only open to citizens of an English-speaking country, I would be much more concerned with grammar than I will be here.
	Citizens from all over the world are present, and they don&apos;t all speak English as fluently as they they do a language that they are more used to.
	English is a horrible language, full of contradictions and strange rules; it&apos;s not easy to speak perfectly.
	We are lucky to have these people in class with us, and we shouldn&apos;t hold not knowing our ugly language perfectly against them.
</p>
<p>
	I&apos;ve already assessed a few discussion response that I&apos;ve disagreed with this term.
	I&apos;ve been grading based on if the thoughts described seem to be well though-out and if they answer the initial discussion question posed, regardless of if I agree with them or disagree.
	I tend to assess longer posts, as I want something that actually makes me think.
	If you successfully give me something to think about and you answer the question posed, I give a good grade.
	However, I may also give a counter-argument in my feedback to you if I disagree.
</p>
<p>
	From week&apos;s readings and learning guide, it looks like the key to effective and consistent peer assessment of learning is a combination of redundancy, double blindness, and clear grading criteria (Bostock, n.d.).
	I don&apos;t mean redundancy with the typical negative connotation, but rather, more like the redundancy used in networking and computers: with many of the same system in place at once, it&apos;s less likely that they&apos;ll all fail at the same time.
	By having many students assess each assignment and have each student assess many assignments.
	This allows anomalies of bad assessment to be quickly spotted and taken care of on a case by case basis.
	&quot;Double blindness&quot; is when neither the assessor nor the assessee know who the other is.
	When the assessee doesn&apos;t know who the assessor is, the assessor is free to give a fair grade instead of trying to appease the assessee.
	Likewise, when the assessor doesn&apos;t know who the assessee is, the assessor isn&apos;t able to engage in favoritism.
	Without clear grading criteria, different students may grade against different standards or not know what to look for, so giving students a uniform grading standard promotes uniformity and fairness.
</p>
<p>
	It&apos;s a little off topic for this discussion, but I found some of the ideas in this week&apos;s readings.
	Peer review can lead to the reveiwee receiving conflicting feedback from multiple peers, which helps prepare them for similar circumstances in a work environment (University of Strathclyde, 2007).
	I had never thought of it that way, but it sounds very accurate.
	Additionally, one may assess their own learning by going back and rereading their responses to old discussion assignments at the end of a course (Al-Shalchi, 2009).
	They can go back and see how much their thoughts, opinions, and understanding have change over the course of the term.
</p>
<p>
	References:
</p>
<p>
	Al-Shalchi, O.
	N.
	(2009, March 1).
	JOLT - Journal of Online Learning and Teaching.
	Retrieved from http://jolt.merlot.org./vol5no1/al-shalchi_0309.htm
</p>
<p>
	Bostock, S.
	(n.d.).
	Microsoft Word - Bostock.doc - Student_peer_assessment_-_Stephen_Bostock.pdf.
	Retrieved from https://cs.auckland.ac.nz./courses/compsci747s2c/lectures/paul/Student_peer_assessment_-_Stephen_Bostock.pdf
</p>
<p>
	University of Strathclyde.
	(2007).
	REAP > PEER > Research.
	Retrieved from https://www.reap.ac.uk/PEER/Research.aspx
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
	Unfortunately, the assigned reading for <span title="Globalization">POLS 1503</span> is behind a login wall, so I can&apos;t really link to it here.
	Additionally though, it&apos;s an eighty-nine page <abbr title="Portable Document Format">PDF</abbr> file! I should have read it today, but I was overwhelmed by the sheer size of it.
	My mother came to the realization today though (without my help) that there&apos;s no sense in my going to Portland.
	Staying home will be a better use of my time if I am to avoid falling behind in school.
	My mother&apos;s main concern seemed to be the wasted time on the road, but even once I got there, I wouldn&apos;t really be able to keep my mind on my studies there.
	My mother had thought that there might be something that I can do to help their sibling, but we both know that the chances are minimal.
	I&apos;ll be home alone tomorrow, so I&apos;ll read the eighty-nine page paper then.
	<span title="Globalization">POLS 1503</span> also has another <a href="http://fod.infobase.com/p_ViewPlaylist.aspx?AssignmentID=VE2GUB">video resource</a> this week, thogh like before, the video site seems to be glitching up.
	I seem to be the only one having this issue though.
	It might be caused by some hacky system that the website uses that makes invalid assumptions that in most cases are true.
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